81 Most food was grown and raised nearby, Henson says. Cattle that supplied milk and meat grazed near the shore or on present-day Harbor Island. The island town was incorporated in 1899. Henson recalls one hotel fire news report that mentioned yard chickens cooked by the blaze. Nearly everything was made from scratch, and safe food handling was demanding, Henson says. In 1919, state inspectors examined Oceanic after the N.C. Board of Health in Raleigh received complaints. Inspectors found dirty table-ware, flies in the kitchen due to lack of window screens, water that tasted of decayed wood and warm, stinking ice boxes awaiting ice deliveries. When an inspector dined that eve-ning, he was served spoiled fish and a fly floating in his iced tea. The hotel received a health score of 51 out of a possible 100. The following year, an improved Oceanic advertised “a staff of kitchen employees especially skilled in the preparation of seafoods.” The dining room remained popular until a mas-sive 1934 fire leveled Oceanic and 102 other buildings. When Wrightsville Beach opened to automobiles in 1935, restaurants blos-somed. The mid- century presented three major seafood-centric choices: Neptune, Marina Grill and Faircloth’s, Henson says. At age 67, The Neptune, now named King Neptune, on downtown Wrightsville Beach’s Lumina Avenue is considered New Hanover County’s old-est restaurant, and once featured seafood and steaks “cooked to a king’s taste.” Marina Grill opened in 1946 in abandoned World War II Marine Corps barracks on the Wrightsville Beach Causeway. The restaurant boasted an approval seal from Duncan Hines, then regarded “The American authority on good eating” rather than the king of cake mix. In 1947, a Marina “deluxe” two-course seafood dinner, with a choice of one entrée – shrimp Newburg, fried frog legs and shad roe with bacon among them – and fries, clam fritters and coleslaw on the side, cost $1.50. Marina Fine Food opened in June 1946 in a former Camp Davis office barracks no longer needed at the end of WWII. It remained open until 1985. It earned the Duncan Hines seal of approval and advertised itself on matchbooks. www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM
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